RBI approved the appointment of Murli Ramakrishna as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of South Indian Bank. The order comes into effect from 1st October 2020. The approved tenure for the new head Murli Ramakrishna will be of 3 years. Murli Ramakrishna will be replacing Mr. VG Mathew who is scheduled to step down as his term expires on September 30th, 2020. Ramakrishna retired earlier this year from the ICICI Bank after his tenure of more than 2 decades. During his time in the ICICI Bank, he handled many functions, processes, and businesses, as Chief Executive of North Asia (Hong Kong& China), the Middle East, Sri Lanka, and Africa Region. He also maintained and managed a balance-sheet of around $20 Billion. Murli Ramakrishna retired from ICICI Bank as Senior General Manager-strategic project on May 30, 2020. In the last assignment in the ICICI Bank Murli Ramakrishna was handling a business transformation project of small and medium-sized enterprise businesses. He joined South India Bank as an Advisor on July 1, 2020. Ramakrishna will be the first MD & CEO of South Indian Bank coming from a private sector lender. In the past, top bosses at South Indian Bank have joined from public sector lenders, chiefly State Bank of India. The bank said that “Murli Ramakrishna is the first choice of the board of directors of South Indian Bank and the firm is awaiting the Reserve Bank of India approval to take things forward” and now since the RBI has shown the green flag things can be carried on peacefully.
On June 6, 2020, South Indian Bank made the following disclosure to the stock exchange:-“We wish to inform that pursuant to the recommendations of the Search Committee which were constituted by the Board of Directors of the Bank and the Nominations and Remuneration Committee of the Bank, and pursuant to the Banking Regulation Act 1949 and the extant Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms, the Board of Directors of the Bank has today finalized the names of two candidates, in order of preference, for the position of the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer (MD & CEO) of the bank.
As per the RBI norms, Bank will be submitting its application to the Reserve Bank of India with the names of the candidates in the order, of preference, seeking approval for the appointment of the new MD & CEO, who shall succeed Mr. VG Mathew whose term is due to expire on September 30, 2020. On the receipt of RBI approval, the Bank shall duly make the requisite pursuant to the Regulations”. The South Indian Bank is also betting big on the retail segment. As of September 2019, the firm had 870 branches, 53 extension counters, and 1406 ATMs. Shares of South Indian Bank were trading 1.65 percent higher at 7.38 per unit on the BSE.
Murli Ramakrishna is the alumni of IIM Bangalore. Before working with the ICICI Bank he worked with GE Capital Transportation Financial Services & with SRF Finance. He has also been head (credit risk), head (Policy risk & BIU), and also headed 4 business groups, emerging cluster group construction equipment finance, and professional equipment finance.
